When I was in grade two my desk was beside a poster of all the recent Scholastic Books releases. There were a few covers that intrigued me but only one managed to remain in my memory until I made it to junior high. The House With A Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs turned up on my neighbor Matthew Regan's bookshelf several years later. I borrowed it and borrowed it, read it and read it; can't remember if I ever actually asked to keep it, but here it is,
the selfsame copy. I've not personally encountered a single soul who has even heard of Bellairs or The House... I did find it recently mentioned among the favorite books of one Justin O'Neill in the pages of one of my favorite periodicals, Me Magazine, though he confused the author with the protagonist. Bellairs however does have a large following scattered about the world, & some of them contribute to a blog dedicated to his work.
The fictional individual Mr. O'Neill confused with the author is young Lewis Barnavelt, who we first meet aboard a bus as he heads to fictional New Zebedee, Michigan after the sudden death of his parents. He's about to enter a minutely detailed, warmly evocative world that puts most every contemporary children's series devoted to gothica and spookiness to complete and utter shame, not to mention making Harry Potter look a right pussy when it comes to the death of one's parents: on this bus ride Lewis intones prayers in their original Latin- 'why art thou sorrowful, o my soul, and why do you trouble me?' He confronts his moony face in the window's relfection, rubbing Wildroot Cream Oil through his hair and thinking about how fat he is. Judica me Deus, he thinks. No, don't judge me, help me to live a happy life.
Lewis's existentential angst is running deep when he's met at the bus station by his Uncle Jonathan and taken to the titular house, where he quickly learns that Jonathan and his best friend/neighbor Mrs. Zimmerman are practicing members of the Capharnaum County Magician's Society. It takes him longer to learn just what in the hell is going on in the house, and herein lies the spell of the book. We're taken into the minute world of a troubled little kid as he discovers the secrets of the house and the surrounding town, all the while weaving a sense of place and a consistent atmosphere unmatched in children's literature today. Bellairs captures acutely the terror and wonder of childhood in brave and beautiful ways; not present are the blank heroics of the current Harry Potter Literature. Lewis's self-doubt and vulnerability, and the ways in which he seeks comfort and understanding are what made this stand out to me as a youngster, and the ways these things inform the story has kept my respect for it high over the years.
Check out this passage, as Jonathan entertains Lewis, Mrs. Zimmerman and Lewis's tenuous friend Tarby:
He stopped in front of the birdbath and held the ball of the cane up under his chin so that his face looked like an actor's face when it is lit from below by footlights. Slowly he raised his right hand and pointed at the sky. "Look!" he cried.
All three of the spectators looked up. At first they saw nothing strange. Then, slowly, a black, tarry, drippy shadow oozed down over the face of the surprised moon. Uncle Jonathan walked over to the tulip bed, put his ear to the ground, and listened. He motioned for the others to join him. Lewis put his ear to the damp earth, and he heard strange things. He heard the noise that earthworms make as they slowly inch along, breaking hard black clods with their blunt heads. He heard the secret inwound conversations of bulbs and roots, and the breathing of flowers. And Lewis knew strange things, without knowing how he came to know them. He knew that there was a cat named Texaco buried in the patch of ground he knelt on. Its delicate ivory skeleton was falling slowly to pieces down there, and its dank fur was shrivelled and matted and rotten. The boy who had buried the cat had buried a sand pail full of shells near it. Lewis did not know the name of the boy, or how long ago he had buried the cat and the pail, but he could see the red and blue pail clearly. Blotches of brown rust were eating up the bright designs, and the shells were covered with green mold.
And this, bringing all of Lewis's anxieties to the surface:
Lewis got up. He threw back the covers, slipped on his bathrobe, and found his slippers. Quietly, he padded down the hall and then down the dark staircase. At the entrance to the front hall he stopped. There was a streetlight burning just outside the front gate, and it threw a bent black shadow against the pleated curtain on the front door. Lewis stood still and watched the shadow. It didn't move. Slowly he began to walk forward. When he reached the door, he closed his fingers around the cold knob and turned it. The door rattled open, and a freezing wind blew in over his bare ankles. There stood his Aunt Mattie, who was dead.
Lewis stepped back as the old woman, her head cocked to one side as it always had been, tottered across the floor toward him. A shaking blue light filled the air around her, and Lewis, his eyes wide open in this nightmare, saw Aunt Mattie as she had been the last time he saw her alive. Her dress was black and wrinkled, she wore heavy shoes with thick heels, and she tapped her bunchy, black umbrella as she went. Lewis even thought he smelled kerosene- her house, her clothing, and her furniture had always reeked of it. The white fungus blotch that was her face shook and glowed as she said, in a horribly familiar voice,
"Well Lewis? Aren't you glad to see me?"
On top of it all, you get illustrations from none other than Edward Gorey:
Lewis wondering about the mysterious neighbor lady
Lewis runs terrified from the tiniest of things after discovering secrets inside an old organ
That I can't pinpoint precisely what it is with this book that makes it so influential is exactly why it is so. However its influence goes hand in hand with another book discovered in the same period, so that's the one I'll get to next time.
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